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Half of the internet doesn't work

I don't know where this post should go so I've put it here:

I've had a lot of problems with my computer, but this is the strangest one yet:

Whenever I try conecting to some pages like google or the debian forums (and many others) I get a 'Firefox can't find server at...'. Other pages like yahoo or this forum work just fine. I checked wih a few friends of mine on the same network and they have no problems with those pages.

I've tried restarting my network (my computer for that matter), stopping the firewall and still no results. Then I tried a few LiveCD's (Ubuntu, Knoppix, DSL) and they had the same problem.

I can't figure out what could have happened. Everything worked fine an hour ago. Has anyone encountered anything like this or do I have an alien infestation in my PC?

One way to check if it's a DNS issue is to find the IP addresses of the sites you're having trouble with (I usually ping them to do this) and enter these in the browser's address bar, rather than using www.whateveritis.com ...

Also try accessing the problem sites using Konqueror. If you have no trouble doing that then it suggests that some settings on Firefox need changing.

Firefox has a lot of 'out of the box' settings which can be tweaked by typing about:firefox in the address bar.

I had similar trouble ages ago, but managed to resolve it. Default settings can sometimes cause mysterious problems, depending on a lot of variables.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso